Seven Up!
by Employee645-A
Summary: A glimpse at the life of Carol and Therese, every seven years. All in the same timeline / headcanon of Built for Two and A String of Pearls.
1. Singin' in the Rain

Monday, December 2nd, 1929  
3:16 p.m.

"I'm telling."

Elaine turned away from the open window to spot her little sister standing still at the doorway to her bedroom. Looking down at her feet, Elaine realized why she hadn't heard her approach. Carol didn't wear shoes and carried her book strap in one hand and clung the doorframe with the other. With an expressionless look on her face, Elaine stared directly at her and shrugged her shoulders, then took another long puff of her cigarette. "Go ahead. I can't possibly get into any more trouble."

The bedroom was too cold, especially with the window so wide open in the middle of an afternoon rain shower. Elaine finished her cigarette, putting the end of it out in a mug that sat precariously at the edge of the window seat cushion. Carol walked up to her, looking into the mug to see there were multiple cigarettes ends and ashes inside. Clearly, that hadn't been her only one. Before sitting down next to her sister, Carol placed her books on the seat then picked up the mug and brought it over to a nearby desk to keep her sister from smoking another one around her. The last thing Carol wanted was for either of her parents to think she had taken up smoking and then blame her seventeen-year-old sister for setting yet another poor example. Not that her mother was home to scold her anyways.

"Why aren't you at school?" Carol asked as she sat down. "Did you run away again?"

There was another thing her parents could complain about and say she even more of a poor influence on her nine-year-old sister: Truancy.

Slumping her shoulders, Elaine shook her head. "No, I'm… I'm not going back for the rest of the school year."

"Oh." Taking a moment for Elaine to elaborate further on her comment, Carol waited; however, no explanation came. "Did you get expelled again?"

"Not exactly," she began, "more like dismissed. Well, not dismissed. I can go back next year. After the baby's born."

Carol's ears perked and her eyes shifted lower to her sister's lap. Scrutinizing the waist of Elaine's skirt, there was a bit of a bulge visible at the waistline. "I thought you were just getting fat."

"You ass," Elaine said and nudged her shoulder.

Carol grinned at her sister, happily swinging her legs back and forth, rambling on as Elaine remained quiet, "Oh boy! A baby! You must be so happy, Elaine! Do you want a boy or a girl? I want it to be a girl because then I'll have someone to play with. It's okay if it's a boy though as long as he's not like those silly boys who chase me around the playground or those rowdy ones who live down the street. You must be really, really pleased. Mommy and daddy must be really, really excited about - "

"They're not. No one is. You're not supposed to be excited for me, Carol. It's not a good thing."

"Oh." Carol shifted in her seat and crossed her arms, calming herself down upon hearing the sullen tone of Elaine's voice. How could someone not be happy about a brand new baby, she wondered. "How come?"

"You're too young to understand," she dismissively answered and returned her gaze towards the window.

Carol tried to look outside as well, wondering what her sister could possibly be starting at. It was impossible to plainly see outside with beads of rain attaching themselves to the window. There was clearly nothing out there. "Don't you have homework?" Taking the hint, Carol gathered she wasn't much in the mood to talk and picked up her books, getting ready to leave the room. She shuffled toward bedroom door, not wanting to bother Elaine any more than she had already, until she heard her sister call back. "Sorry I'm not a better influence for you." Shrugging back in reply, Carol shut the door behind her and continued to her room.

Undoing the buckle of her book strap, she stacked everything in the desk, only opening up her composition book to look at the list she had made for herself of homework to complete. Arithmetic. Penmanship. History. French. She looked back and forth at the books for school and the books on her bookshelf, having difficulty trying to choose what to do. She glanced over at the Big Ben alarm clock sitting on the nightstand, debating if she had enough time to keep reading _The Wizard of Oz_.

Deciding against it, she picked up her arithmetic book to start the twenty problems the class had been assigned at the end of the day. Carol always looked forward to the math problems they did in class; she loved solving the large multiplication problems and translating fractions into decimals and vice versa. Her favorite though, her absolute favorite would be when her teacher gave them speed tests and she'd have to solve upwards of fifty problems in only a minute or so. Every time they did one of those little quizzes, Carol was almost always not only the one who would finish the questions first, but answer the most (if not all) correctly. Of course, her teacher would consistently praise her as being better at arithmetic than the boys in class, and she had no problem reminding Carol or her parents of this. She didn't quite understand: was she not supposed to be better at it than the boys in her class?

On the other hand, her penmanship could use some serious work because it was extremely messy when compared to the other girls. No one mentioned how the boys' handwriting was; it was more important how her handwriting was compared with the other _girls_. Carol was having difficulty with cursive and no matter how much she tried to write cleanly and neatly with her little blue fountain pen, everything always came out a mess. Ink smudges on the side of her right hand, dots of black ink on her fingertips where she held her index finger too close to the underside of the pen from where the ink flowed. It was even worse when she had to use an inkwell and a nib pen. No matter how much Ivory soap she used, the ink spots never seemed to fully come off; however, she found her skin then became painfully dry and cracked from the frequent washing.

After a few minutes still wondering where to start, Carol began copying the multiplication problems into her composition book and in no time, had finished them all. As she put her math book into a separate pile, there was a knock on her door, followed by Elaine opening without entering. "Carol, your little friend Abby is here… and she brought that bug box with her again." Carol turned around with a smirk, watching how Elaine clung to the doorframe. "She's downstairs. Don't you dare let those caterpillars or spiders or whatever is in that box loose everywhere. Got it?"

"I got it, Elaine," Carol groaned as she put away some of the items on her desk, "and there are no spiders in there." Elaine didn't leave, she remained in the doorway watching her little sister pull out her riding pants to change into.

"You know how much mom hates you wearing those around."

Carol rolled her eyes. "Mom's staying at Grandma's right now. Are you going to call her back from Baltimore?" she retorted as she pulled her jumper over her head. She reached for her tan Jodhpurs she had placed over the foot of the bed and quickly put them on in the cold room.

"I'd ask if you need me to look over your homework, but… "

"But?"

"You're smarter than me." She waited a moment before saying anything else. "Sorry about earlier."

"It's alright," Carol replied as she laced up her sneakers, then got a grey and red sweater from the armoire and unfolded it, rolling it up so she could put it on over her wrinkled white collared shirt. "Besides, you are a good influence on me." She pulled the sweater over her head then smoothed her bobbed hair as she walked over to the door where Elaine stood. "Whatever you do, I choose to do the exact opposite."

* * *

It was just before sunset when Elaine came downstairs to check on the two girls, making sure that Carol (and Abby) did live up to the promise of not releasing whatever happened to be in that bug box into the parlor. The rain had given up before Abby showed up, but it didn't change the fact that Abby was still there and probably needed to be home before it got dark. Abby and Carol sat next to each other on the couch by the fireplace, giggling about something and listening to the radio.

"Isn't it time for Abby to be heading home?" Elaine exasperatedly asked as she turned down the radio dial to silence the room. The two turned around and looked over the back of the couch toward Elaine who was tapping her foot against the tiled part of the floor.

"Look!" Carol remarked as she pointed to the fuzzy brown and black caterpillar crawling around the tops of her fingers. "This is Isabella, but Abby calls her Izzy. Isn't that right?" Carol laughed as Izzy tickled her skin as she walked toward her pinky finger. Elaine shirked away at the sight of the caterpillar, raising her hands and making a face of disgust.

"Yup," Abby agreed. "Here, pass her back to me, would ya? I don't think Elaine likes her all that much." With a whimper, Carol passed the little caterpillar back to Abby who held out a twig for Izzy to wrap around before safely going back into the box and packed up the rest of her things. "I gotta split anyhow."

"Can you come over again tomorrow after school?" Carol eagerly asked. Carol loved when Abby came over because she would always bring along things like grown-up books, her bug box, or even her push scooter which she would let Carol ride.

"Sure, I'll ask my mom," Abby offered as she pulled her on her yellow rain slicker. "Or maybe if it's nice, we can go play in the treehouse?"

Carol scrunched her nose and shook her head. "Nah, it's going to probably be too cold for that. Bring Izzy!"

As soon as Abby was out the door and tying her bug box securely to the rear carrier of her bicycle, Elaine quickly turned to her sister and said, "Come on, let's make something for supper. I'm hungry."

Carol paused and looked around, suddenly realizing it had been Elaine who came upstairs to tell her that Abby was there rather than the housekeeper. There also wasn't a snack ready for her to eat when she came home from school either.

"Wait, where's Martha?"

"Dad had to let her go."

"Oh." Elaine opened the door to the icebox, ignoring her sister as she pulled out what remained of the Thanksgiving turkey. "Why?"

"Dad can't take any chances at the moment. He might be able to hire her back next year. I don't know. Since I'll be home for the time being, I'll be looking after you in the mornings, making your lunches, and when you get home from school."

"I can take care of myself," Carol confidently noted.

"You don't know how to work the washing machine, you're allowed nowhere near an iron, and you would eat sandwiches for every meal if given the chance." Carol looked at what remained of the turkey and wrinkled her nose. "You tired of turkey?" Elaine asked with smile.

"Yeah."

"Tough. We're having turkey." Carol furrowed her brow and looked up at her sister. "Get a pan so I can warm it up, okay?"

"Please go get a pan… " Carol corrected in a barely audible voice, not moving until she heard her sister ask properly.

"Please go get a pan," sighed Elaine as she searched by the stove for a match, not looking over at her sister as she spoke.

Carol crouched down to open a cabinet by the icebox and looked around for something large enough to heat a couple slices of turkey and a couple helpings of roasted squash. The roasting pan was heavy, but Carol was able to lift it to place by Elaine who was preoccupied with cutting thin slabs and placing them neatly into the pan.

"Should we make some for Dad?" Elaine asked as she carved a couple slices.

Carol nodded then pointed to one of the drumsticks. "Could I please have that?"

"Sure."

As they finished putting everything to heat into the pan, Carol opened the oven door so Elaine could put everything inside. Once in, she looked at the clock and asked Carol to help her remember the time so nothing would burn. Waiting for the food to heat, Carol walked over and stood in front of her sister who leaned against the kitchen counter, her eyes focused on the backsplash of the kitchen counter where a crumb of dressing had landed while she had been slicing the turkey. Distracted by the red of the bow in Carol's hair, Elaine turned her gaze away from the crumb then circled her arms around Carol's shoulders, pulling her back against her and holding onto her tightly. Carol tilted her head upward to look at her sister with a smile, assuring her everything would be alright.


	2. The Way You Look Tonight

Tuesday, June 30th, 1936  
10:48 p.m.

"Give her here."

"I can't."

"Well, hurry up, would ya?"

"Keep your voice down! She's finally asleep, goddammit."

"Come on! And get the envelope from my pocket." The woman sighed, passing the sleeping two-and-a-half-year-old to her husband. The little girl held onto a hand-crocheted toy lion as she moved from her mother to her father, resting her head against his shoulder, still sleeping soundly. Reluctantly, she pulled a wrinkled envelope filled with dollar bills from her husband's pocket and "Ring the bell, would ya? They're expecting us and we're already fifteen minutes late."

She looked over at her sleeping daughter for another moment and stroked her light brown hair before ringing the doorbell of St. Margaret's.

* * *

10:48 p.m.

Still clinging to the handle of the '34 Dodge that had pulled into the driveway of her father's house, Carol leaned her head in and thanked her friend for driving her home after the pictures, quickly wishing a goodnight before rushing toward the front steps of the house to open the door. Carol wrung her fingers around the chrome fixture, tightening her grip on it as she heard it click securely shut. The front light was on. The bulb swarmed with pesky mosquitoes and whatever other bugs were attracted to the brightness in the midst of the summer night. She really just wanted to sit outside, but wasn't in the mood to have her arms and legs covered with mosquito bites for the next few weeks. Definitely didn't want any blemishes all over her legs from scratching them even though she knew she oughtn't. Before she hesitated any longer, Carol opened the front door of the house and rushed in, hoping none of the bugs had followed her indoors.

Carol paused as soon as the door was closed and locked behind her, catching her breath as she rested her back and arms against the cool metal door. She shut her eyes and took several deep breaths, pausing before opening them again to peer into the darkness of the foyer. It was still, the air heavy and warm. She could feel the coolness radiate off the metal door and permeate her thin cotton dress. Maybe all she needed was thirty minutes or more in the comfort of a nice, cool bath to make things better rather than standing directly in front of the main door to the house.

Mostly, Carol was upset because the nice cool air that had been surrounding her for over three hours inside the movie theater, all the lovely coolness that she had successfully built up over all those hours, had just gone to waste while sitting in the front seat of the car that, according to what she saw out the window, had just turned out the driveway and onto the road. She didn't bother turning on the entry light; she didn't intend on standing there all night long and certainly didn't want any of the bugs from outside to start thinking they had a chance with the other illumination nearby.

Carol still tried to calm her breathing, but now her legs were shaking, almost wobbly, with little tremors every thirty seconds so. It was too hard to regain her focus after something like that. Thank God when she got out of the car she didn't have to too walk far to get to the front door because she'd never have made it otherwise.

Her stomach was in knots, fluttering and jittery, tight and nervous as she composed herself. She couldn't have been happier for having skipped dinner because if she hadn't, it no doubt would have been spewed across the entryway of the house due to sheer nerves. Coupled with the thought that if she had those completely wobbly legs, it could have been an utter nightmare.

She pressed her thighs together, feeling cool, damp satin between her legs as she squirmed back and forth. The fabric of the tap pants she was wearing did next to nothing to absorb the wetness that had accumulated. Maybe it was a good thing to have stopped where they did. It was so embarrassing how aroused she could get from just a little necking in the front seat of a parked car on a summer's evening. Was it supposed to be like that? Luckily there hadn't been any wandering hands up her skirt and no awkward explanations needed to be provided.

She tried bending her knees: one knee that had been far too cramped along the bench seat of the car and the other that had been poised on the floorboard for balance. That's what happens, Carol, when you're at least five inches taller than everyone, she reminded herself. Looking down at her knees, she was able to faintly make out in the moonlight how the stocking on her right leg, the one that had been resting against the floorboard of the Dodge, had a slight tear, no doubt from the twisting and pressure she had been putting on it. Perhaps she could repair it with some needle and thread in the morning. It wasn't as though she had big plans for the following morning anyhow, that was, other than sleep in, listen to the radio, and perhaps talk a walk if the weather was agreeable.

When she glanced down to her knee and looked back up, only then did she notice on the entryway table a small pile of presents, a few envelopes, and two Butterscotch Krimpets with an unlit candle placed in the middle safely sitting underneath a glass dome. Finally turning on only one switch from the overhead lighting so she could see everything plainly, Carol smiled.

The sweet treats were all her dad; he probably arranged everything like that before he left on business for at least a week. From among the envelopes, the first item that caught her attention was a postcard, unmistakably from Abby with the messy writing and the colorful, yet frightening image of chiseled blond men in scant athletic garb on the front.

 _I'd say "wish you were here!" however I don't think you're entirely ready for this scene yet - no matter how mature you are, Carol. Maybe for your 18th, yeah? Europe's great and all, but I miss you, N.J. and all the gang back home. I hope this arrives in time for your birthday. Happy 16th!_

 _Liebe Grüße & Best Birthday Wishes!_

 _Abby_

 _p.s. write me some time, would you?_

Carol flipped over the postcard to look at the front then turned it back over, noting that it had been sent three weeks earlier. Well, at least it made it in time for her birthday, she gathered. Either that or her father or Martha had saved it for her until then.

There was a pretty card from her grandparents in Connecticut that had a five-dollar bill tucked inside, folded into the shape of a heart. Carol laughed to herself, knowing that only her grandfather would have taken the pains to do that just for her. She already knew what she wanted to get herself with the majority of the money and planned on going out in the morning to buy it.

 _We'll see you (and spoil you something awful) in a couple weeks. Until then, buy yourself something nice to tide you over. Happy 16th Birthday!_

 _Love, hugs and kisses,_

 _Grandma & Grandpa_

On the table there were also two wrapped gifts in different papers: one large, one small. She picked up the smallest package first, tugging away the string around it so she could get at the little notecard safely tucked between the paper and the string. It was a gift from her aunt who lived down in Maryland with her grandmother on her mother's side of the family.

 _Fondest birthday wishes to our delightful Carol._

 _Many happy returns,_

 _Your loving aunt and grandmother_

Could they be any more impersonal in their message? Carol asked herself. It wasn't as though they never saw each other or had never spent a day together in their lives. Unwrapping it to find a thin square box, Carol raised the lid to find, of all things, a pearl necklace. Not to be ungrateful, but what did she want with a pearl necklace? All the other girls at school wore them. All the ones who thought they were somebody least. She didn't want to be like all of the others. It was certainly pretty; she didn't exactly have an entire jewelry box full of earrings, bracelets, and necklaces to start with anyways. Supposing needed to start somewhere and with something, she took out the necklace and shut the lid, faintly smiling at the nice gesture, and put the box aside. Without having to look in the nearby mirror, Carol took each end of the necklace in her hands and looped it around to the back of her neck to secure the clasp. Letting both her hands run past the beads around her neck, one hand fell to her side, the other lingered and she gently toyed with her thumb the individual pearls within reach.

The last item, rectangular and heavy, made a familiar sound when she grasped it in her hands; a sound that made her happy because it could only be one thing. The one gift she really wanted. The one gift her father absolutely knew she wanted. There was no card with it, however there was no need because she knew who it was from. When she tore off the paper, Carol grinned, holding in her hands a thick hardback book with a pale yellow and dark brown dust jacket. Inside the front cover there was a brief inscription:

 _June 30, 1936_

 _Happy 16th Birthday, Carol!_

 _Love,_

 _Dad_

And the inscription was followed by a small insert on pink paper: _This is the right one? I hope so! The ladies in line were vicious this morning. I fought three of them off with my bare hands, then bought them coffees. Love you!_

Now she'd have to find another way to spend the five dollars of her grandparents' money since she no longer needed to spend three of those dollars on a copy of _Gone With the Wind._ Carol felt better after opening the cards and presents, smiling as she looked over the little pile of items on the table as she forgot how nervous she had been during the ride home from the pictures and then the moment her friend had parked the car.

Thinking back, she realized that had this been the year before, she would have been absolutely terrified of how her evening had gone, not to mention terrified of having to spend an evening alone opening her presents. She missed her father, and even her sister, but she loved how the day had turned out. She loved her presents. She loved that her family (at least the ones who mattered) trusted her enough to let her stay alone, aside from the daily visits from the housekeeper. She even loved how her father had put out her favorite sweet snack just for her, which she soon wrapped in a strip of the torn wrapping paper to carry upstairs with her for later.

As she passed by the mirror in the entryway to switch off the light, Carol stopped to look at herself. Her hair was slightly out of place, especially when she unpinned her hat. Her cheeks were still flushed, warm to the touch. She ran her hands from her neck on down her figure, fondling the new necklace and smoothing out her dress. Thoroughly observing herself in the mirror, Carol noticed her own pale pink lipstick was smudged and that there was an even deeper shade of raspberry pink streaked along the side of her neck, leaving residue on the collar of her dress.

Admiring the smudges of lipstick, Carol faintly smirked at her own image in the mirror before heading upstairs to eagerly take that nice, cool bath and start reading her new book. She didn't feel an ounce of remorse or guilt. Well, there might not have been any tongue, but that was a damn good first kiss.


	3. Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'

Thursday, May 20th, 1943  
11:45 a.m.

Therese loved the silence of a museum. She loved how the space could be crowded with a hundred people and - if they happened to be all grown-ups, that was - be completely silent as everyone was absorbed with looking at the pictures hanging on the walls or the statues strategically standing in the middle of a room. She blended in with the other children, dressed in the same little jumper and blouse as the other girls. She dragged her feet across the hardwood, trudging along after her classmates who were busy pushing and shoving each other in order to get close to the artworks. Naturally, the bigger, taller children had worked their ways to the front would the smaller children, like Therese, were stuck in the back.

She didn't make the same amount of noise as the other children as she moved from place to place. No one could possibly suspect her walking up behind them and standing there with her notebook in one hand and her Brownie camera in the other. Even with the camera in her hand, no one thought Therese was taking their photo. No one ever begged her to have their photo taken. Her classmates knew that she only ever took photos of boring things, like the way the shadows crept into a room or how sunlight reflected in glass, and scoffed at how she could waste those precious sixteen exposures on such seemingly boring topics.

Sister Alicia never thought they were boring, then again, she always asked Therese to take photos of her and the other staff and faculty at St. Margaret's. Sometimes, whenever there was a problem with a ceiling leak or something was destroyed during a storm, Sister Alicia would rush to find Therese, who somehow was the only person at the school with a camera, and ask her to capture images of the damage. Therese liked how useful she could be, even if it was just to get a picture of stained carpeting or a downed branch that wrecked a window. Water always caused interestingly destructive swirls in fabric, broken glass always made the most impressive sharp points she could never go near. There was an odd beauty in the destruction of nature that she liked to capture with that little camera.

Therese loved her camera. It might not have been a shiny, fancy, and new like those Leica imports, but it had character and it was clear that the camera had been well-used and well-loved by its previous owner. The original handle on it was broken and Therese had to use a piece of string around the two metal knobs at the top to form a convenient way to carry it. She added two pieces of string to the top: a short one so she could carry it or pick it up with one hand, and then a long string so she could carry the camera around her neck in case her hands were full. There was also a dent in one of the corners where it looked as though it had taken quite a tumble at one point. The dent also masked what looked like a few initials that had been carved into the bottom; Therese was only ever able to make out the letter R.

* * *

11:45 a.m.

After Easter, Elaine went out to Washington to visit her father and Margie. Ever since Margie had left St. Margaret's a couple years earlier, Elaine had been making a point of visiting her father and her at least once a year, always on her own without any of the boys. No one in the family knew that Elaine's baby girl head grown up just down the road from the house, no one except their mother, who had apparently taken that fact to her grave. Everyone thought little Margie been given up for adoption when all that time, she was only down the road from them. It wasn't until the funding she had provided ran out (or so they said) almost eight years later that the school came calling, asking what to do.

That's when everyone found out.

That's when they decided it was best for Margie to go live with her grandfather, who was more than happy to have the chance to raise another daughter, this time with his new wife. Or maybe it was just girlfriend. Her status was unclear; regardless, she never came back East whenever Carol's father visited and she always seemed to make herself scarce whenever Carol was around. Elaine had met her on each of her visits, but she never pried and he never offered. Perfectly typical of their family, Carol told herself. As for Margie, all Elaine would say was that she sure as hell reminded her of Carol at thirteen, never elaborating any further as to what that meant.

The two oldest boys were in school in Massachusetts, leaving Jack, not yet five, with Carol and her grandparents. There were only a couple months of school remaining and then they'd have all day together during the summer. Two days a week, when Carol only had classes and didn't have to monitor afternoon study hall, she would wake up a little bit earlier than usual and get herself ready, followed by supervising Jack as made his bed, washed up, and dressed. Jack always insisted he could tie his own oxfords, but he always needed his aunt's help with the little navy, red, and yellow striped tie he was particularly attached to and always insisted on wearing whenever they went out.

Teaching, in general, would have been so much easier if Carol didn't have to hear upwards of fifty times a day questions for "Mrs. Aird" but she supposed she brought that problem on herself nearly a year and a half earlier. Every time she heard it, it was yet another prod to her psyche and reminder of the enormous hole in which she found herself on a daily basis. On some level, she wished she could let the girls just call her Carol, but that was far too informal in these circumstances. If she had been teaching at a college, she definitely would have considered that; however, that was practically a moot issue. She couldn't even call her students by their first names, always stuck calling them by their surnames. Sometimes, Carol wished the students knew that as a teacher, she had about ten times as many rules as them. The difference was though that if she was out of line, her punishment would be a bit more severe than just a conduct.

Since she was married, she didn't have to live in the faculty residence or be a housemother, although she had that choice when she started. That was one perk being married, she supposed, not having to live with a bunch of other teachers who would bore her to pieces and probably go on and on about their dates, what they did…

When she thought more about it, she realized living with them would probably be like college all over again, and Carol certainly didn't want to relive that. Carol was one of the few married teachers the school had hired for the start of the academic year with much of the male faculty otherwise and elsewhere engaged. There weren't many applicants for the position, and certainly not ones with qualifications and recommendations like Carol's or the fact that she didn't require any relocation stipend. It was only two or three classes per day with the occasional task of supervising study hall on Tuesday evenings: the perfect amount of time away from home and doing _something_ meaningful.

She could have gotten her own apartment or small house somewhere in the vicinity, but her grandparents lived only ten minutes away and it was much nicer to stay with them anyhow. Her grandmother and grandfather were getting older; her grandmother was in particularly poor health, no stranger to practically weekly home visits by the doctor who kept insisting that she needed to hire a nurse, especially on those days Carol was away from home for a better part of the afternoon. Despite having offered to stay home, her grandfather insisted that she not even think of foregoing her position at the school, even if it was only a couple classes and a handful of responsibilities. Her grandfather was like that though, always encouraging her to be somebody and gain experience from whatever situation she found herself in.

Of course, that was the complete opposite of Harge's family. One reason Carol adored teaching was for the somewhat petty fact that it bothered Harge's mother to bits how a married woman of her "status" left the house nearly every single day for the sake of employment. It was also the perfect reason for Carol to hardly have to go there to visit them. She remembered how badly and how often they asked her to come visit in the months following their impromptu wedding and Harge's departure, but she couldn't leave school. After graduation and as soon as she was home during the summer, almost every other weekend Carol found herself on the train to Montclair for family luncheon. Harge's older sister, Marge, would often be there as well, and all Carol could wonder was what two parents would be so irresponsible as to give their children such irritating, rhyming nicknames.

Then during her visit at around Easter time, the first time they had seen each other since the wedding, Harge's mother greeted her with the grandest of smiles, then stared at Carol's waistline and returned her gaze back to her face and smile. The way she kept looking at her made Carol so uncomfortable being scrutinized like that, making her wrap the sweater she wore even tighter around herself and hold her arms closer to her body to prevent both of them from looking at her like that. After the third time she glanced downward like that, Harge's mother outright asked, "Is there anything you want to tell us, dear?" Shaking her head and nervously grinning, Carol replied no and draped the cloth napkin across her lap, then quickly pulled her sweater around her. Carol looked around as she tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, Harge's father smiling back at her and nodding his head, his mother trying hard to break a smile as she again tried, "You sure?" Both of them earnestly looked at her with the cheekiest of grins until she answered no one more time. It wasn't until she got back to school that she realized why they were looking at her that way, why they kept awaiting some kind of announcement or explanation.

Besides, there was no way it could have even been possible for her to be pregnant in the first place, and not like they even knew the half of how that wedding night went. Granted that hygiene class she took in college hadn't been all that graphic and detailed, Carol was pretty certain she couldn't have gotten pregnant from staying up and playing Monopoly, fully clothed in some oversized men's flannel pajamas along with her similarly dressed husband who was due to leave for the West Coast the following morning. She remembered how she and Harge spent a good ten minutes debating who would get the cannon token, playing until the early morning hours, smoking cigarettes, sharing a bottle of scotch while chatting about how all of this was going to work out between them; wondering how the hell out had all gone so far so fast. They would just sort everything out between them when Harge got home. _If_ he got home, he reminded her.

There was such a rush of marriages between the holidays, no one would have ever noticed a wedding announcement in the _Times_ or any other publication anyhow. Not like there would have been enough space in the papers with all the couples in the Tri-State Area trying to get married at the last minute. Not like either of their families necessarily wanted to announce to the world that they had gotten married. Carol didn't tell anyone back at college that she had gotten married; as soon as she got to campus, she removed the engagement ring and the silver wedding band, and tucked them into the back of a small lock box in which she kept her growing collection of valuables. Next time she was in New York, she told herself that she needed to get a safe deposit box because it was getting tiresome lugging the now cramped and heavy small metal case around with her.

As soon as she finished school and returned to her grandparents' house, the ring went back on. And every time Carol looked down at her hand, she reminded herself of what she had gotten herself into, especially with the ever-lingering and very real possibility that Harge might actually come back. Moreover, it wasn't as though he wanted to come back if it meant returning as miserable as his uncle had been after the Great War.

Carol liked her students. They were all about sixteen or seventeen years old, all girls. Rather, young ladies as the staff and trustees preferred to call them. Carol was that age not seven years earlier; how drastically her life had changed in just those seven years. Would the same happen to them too? Probably, she pessimistically thought, life never turned out as planned. The girls in her classes would make such a fuss over Jack every time he came in, bringing him snacks from the tearoom or coming up to him to say hello when class started or ended. At first, they thought Jack was her son since they had such similar eyes and a similar shade of that flat blond hair. "No, no," she told them with a skittish laugh, "he's my very sweet, very dear, littlest nephew who I look after every once in a while."

While Carol spent an hour with each of her classes, Jack would either sit and read, or sometimes follow along with the presentations, looking at the slides his aunt would show and listening to her talk about the artworks she presented. Not that he hadn't already been doing that since he was just over a year old. He was very quiet, watching along as the classes reviewed slides for their exams. Once the classes were over and the students gone, Carol would gather a couple chair cushions and slouch down onto the floor beside him and the projector, engaging him with questions to get him talking. He loved looking at the shapes, colors, and figures in the paintings and hearing his aunt tell him a story about it.

Sometimes, Carol would get to take him on a morning museum visit when she had a day off. After getting Jack ready to go out and ensure her grandparents were both settled with her being gone for half a day, she and Jack would take the train into the city after all of the commuters had made their way into lower Manhattan. Most of the time they would go to one museum and only see a couple rooms during their visit, then have lunch somewhere before taking a train home before the commuters filled every train leaving Grand Central heading east of the Hudson.

"What do you like in this one?" she asked as they stopped in front of van Gogh's _Starry Night_. Jack looked up at the picture with a big smile. Carol followed his eyes as they scanned the painting in front of them; she could see how they flew from the giant swirls in the middle to the moon in upper right corner to the big cypress tree to the left side, and then down to the little town in the foreground.

Starting to raise his hand to point, Jack stopped himself when his aunt gave him a brief shake of her head and he lowered his arm. "The swirls," he answered as his little head spun around following the clockwise flow of blues to gesture at what he wanted to point at originally.

"What else?" Carol asked, reaching down to grasp Jack's hand.

"The shade of blue."

"That shade is called cobalt."

"Cobalt," Jack repeated. "The moon is wicked pretty too."

Carol's breath hitched for a moment and reached her hand up to wipe the corner of her eye to mask the expression on her face. With the softest of laughs and the gentlest of smiles, she immediately uttered, "Don't say 'wicked,' sweetheart. Say 'very' instead."

Jack sighed in response and turned back to the painting. "It's _very_ pretty."

"How many stars are there?"

Biting his lower lip, Jack glanced back at the painting then his aunt as he raised his hand just a little bit to count the stars, making sure it was acceptable for him to somewhat point at each star in order to count them correctly. He let go of her hand as he counted along to each of the bright swirled stars.

Holding up both hands, he showed his aunt and answered, "Ten."

"Check again."

Turning his head quickly to look back, Jack shrugged. "Is the one on the side a star?"

"Which side?"

Jack held up both his hands, noticing the L that formed with his left hand. "Like the letter L. Left. Left side." He showed his aunt the L-shape of his hand and smiled at her.

"That one is also a star, although it's a bit tricky to tell, isn't it?" Carol moved in to examine the elusive eleventh star, noticing the faintest orange dot in the middle. She looked back at the other stars gathered in the middle of the painting and squinted. "You know, all these stars kind of look like… " she trailed off as her eyes fluttered from star to star, ultimately blushing before she opened her mouth again as Jack looked at her expectantly, "...nevermind what they look like," she quickly said as she cleared her throat and changed the topic. She looked around the rim to see if anyone else was in there who might have heard her. "How many stars are there then?"

Jack recounted them and clutched his aunt's hand again when he had the answer. "Eleven!"

"That's right," said Carol in a low yet cheerful voice. She steered Jack with a gentle push of her hand to stand directly in front of her so she could adjust the grey cap on his head that had find askew. Somewhere behind her, there was a commotion of children's voices and laughter. A school group was entering the room and making the biggest fuss as they walked in with their tiny feet scuffling and shuffling along the hardwood floors. Couldn't they be quieter and pick up their feet properly when they walked? Carol thought, suddenly feeling much older than twenty-two for having thought it in the first place. Jack turned his head, also distracted by the noise as the group of twenty children came in. They were almost all bigger than him; all the girls dressed identically, all the boys dressed identically. As they approached them to crowd near the _Starry Night_ painting, Carol noticed the boys' blazers adorned with a familiar crest featuring a dragon and a hammer.

"How about we go get lunch, Jack?" He looked up and nodded his head. Carol rushed him past the other children as they walked away from the crowd and their instructor. Carol shared a sympathetic and knowing smile with the teacher accompanying the children, knowing what it was like to herd that many young people in a small space like a gallery or a room of a museum. Admittedly, approximately twenty seventeen-year-old girls were quite another breed of issues compared to that lot all under the age of twelve, it appeared.

Walking out of the room, Jack stopped when he saw a little girl, older than him by a good few years, holding an older-style Brownie camera. He stood in front of her for a moment, observing the way she held the camera in both hands and pointing it in the direction of the teacher and a couple students, but somehow avoiding them completely and aiming for the floor. Jack looked down at their feet, curious to see what on the floor could possibly be more interesting than the van Gogh painting on the wall in front of them. As he further inspected, he noticed she was interested in the scuff marks on light-colored wood flooring - not the teacher and her classmates like he originally thought.

"I like your camera," Jack told the little girl before his aunt tugged his hand, drawing his attention back to her as they left the room.


	4. Adelaide's Lament

Saturday, June 17th, 1950  
7:20 a.m.

Therese still hadn't got out of the bed yet. All the other older girls had already woken up, dressed, and headed downstairs for breakfast. Therese, on the other hand, was coughing, sneezing, persistently saying she had a sore throat, which irritated her because she had to keep saying it in the first place even though she could barely get the words out.

"How is it you have a cold? Or perhaps it's the flu?" Therese shrugged and stared back at the nurse from the infirmary. "Have you been drinking your orange juice?"

What an odd question, Therese thought, does she think I'm six and not sixteen?

No, she always gave her juice to classmate who sat next to her who traded the bottle of juice usually for his cookies or slice of cake. For whatever reason, he preferred the bottle of juice to a dessert every day. Therese always traded with him, regardless of what the sisters thought they should and shouldn't have to equate to a balanced meal.

"Yes, Sister."

"Taking your vitamins?"

No, she never took the vitamins either. They always tasted funny when they started to dissolve in her mouth. She even tried to put water in her mouth first, then take the pills, but they still dissolved too quickly and tasted too bitter or too metallic. Therese always hid those in the pocket of her skirt, wrapped in a handkerchief that she would shake out into a trash bin after the morning's first class.

"Yes, Sister."

The woman sweetly smiled at her, producing a thermometer from her pocket. "Open your mouth." Reluctantly, Therese opened her mouth as the nurse placed the thermometer under her tongue. "I'll be back in a moment, Therese." Therese simply looked up, following the nurse with her eyes without moving her head a muscle.

Why did everyone at St. Margaret's always insist on treating her like such a child?

There weren't many older children at the home, mostly younger children; the insinuation (or expectation?) that by the time a child reached about ten or twelve, the parent or parents would have gotten their act together economically and/or socially to be able to finally take their child home. That wasn't the case though when it came to Therese; her father passed away when she was little, her mother remarried and moved somewhere to the sticks of Connecticut. It wasn't exactly the sticks, it was by the water, but wasn't exactly easy to get there by train. Her mother's financial situation certainly wasn't the perilous state it had been when she was nearly three years old and there was no excuse for Therese to still have been at St. Margaret's at sixteen.

It used to hurt. The exclusion. The abandonment. The solitude. Therese got used to it. More than she ought to have at that age. She could take care of herself: she didn't need someone looking after like this, not when there were far younger children in the infirmary with her.

When the nurse returned, Therese sat up a little straighter in bed and faintly smile, dislodging the thermometer from the mouth.

"103.2°F."

* * *

1:20 p.m.

Carol looked into the bedroom, over at the nightstand, where she eyed the title of the book she had recently purchased while in Nice. She just wanted to sit somewhere quiet and read, not listen to someone ask her every couple of minutes how to say this or that, or tell someone something on their behalf. "Tell him I want ice in my water!" or "Whaddya mean I can't get a cappuccino at four in the afternoon?" Vacationing in Europe was tiring, not the relaxation she had hoped for. She wished Rindy had come with them, at least then she'd have an excuse to sit with her, take her on walks somewhere, or show her all the things she was actually excited about, even if she was too little to understand.

During their week along the Riviera, she had picked up a good stack of books at one of the bookshops near the hotel; eleven lovely books in French that she would have no fear of Harge pawing through or dog-earring the pages like he did with everything else of hers that he touched. Carol never thought she would ever be so happy that Harge had taken German in prep school and college. Then again she rationalized he mustn't have been very good with German considering he spent the war in the Pacific.

"What's that you're reading?" he asked as he pulled the book from Carol's hand earlier that day. Before Carol could even say anything or tilt her sunglasses lower to make eye contact with Harge, he was already quickly skimming through the pages and looking entirely confused with each page that blew past him. There were no pictures, artworks or anything within that could give him some clue as to the books content.

"Harge - " Carol reached forward in an attempt to get her book back from him; he was acting like such a willful child.

"How can you read this?" He continued flipping through the pages as the bare beige cover gave little indication as to what the book was about.

"The same way you read something in English," Carol dryly answered as she pried the book from his hands and held it tightly to her chest. "You wouldn't like it anyhow. It's philosophical. "

"It's probably a waste of time, more like."

Glaring back at her book from the distance of their hotel room balcony, Carol was too busy looking around for her handkerchief, hoping it was next to her book. The handkerchief wasn't anywhere to be found though.

"Who develops a cold in Rapallo in June?" Carol sneezed for the seventh time in a row and walked back into the hotel room, ignoring Harge going on and on about the likelihood of her actually not feeling well in the midst of summer. "In other words, you just don't want anyone to see you in your bathing suit because you're getting fat."

She turned red and bit her lower lip, masking her face from her husband who seemed to have lost all sense of tact and decorum while hopping from island to island in the Pacific within the past decade. "I'm just a little bloated right now."

Harge shook his head and smirked. "That's not bloating," he said as he pointed his finger toward her stomach, "you're just getting fat." Instead of keeping up yelling to her from the balcony of the hotel where everyone most likely knew what they were arguing about, Harge rushed into the room and smiled. "Unless… ?"

Slumping her shoulders and tilting her head to the left, Carol looked at him with an expressionless look and let out a very audible sigh.

"No," Carol adamantly insisted and turned away from her husband, muttering under her breath, "and I'm _not_ fat."

For a moment, she thought Harge had heard her, however he remained quiet, only momentarily disappointed, and looked around the room for his button-down shirt to throw on, finding something draped over the desk chair. "I told Cy we'd meet them at one-thirty."

Shifting back toward the bed and the nightstand, Carol thought about socializing with Harge's boss and Jeanette, hesitant to having to put on a smile and otherwise cheerful disposition for a full afternoon, followed by a never-ending dinner and drinks. What sort of vacation was it in the first place when one's boss was there floating around and still commanding the daily activities? Carol just wanted to be by herself, make her own itinerary, be herself. The book sitting on the bedside table reminded her of that, finally opening her mouth to speak and avoiding any expression Harge might have been making. "I think I'm going to rest a bit. Have some vitamins and some of that blood orange juice."

"How can you drink that stuff? It's all pulpy and nasty."

Carol turned away from him with her eyes shut, doing her best to keep her composure. "I don't feel well. I have a cold. I'm bloated. Stop picking on every decision I make."

"I'm not picking on you, Carol. You want me to have Cy's wife come up?"

Surely he knew her name by now. They were always playing this game. How long had he known Jeanette? Twelve years? Since he graduated from college? Shutting her eyes, there was no use trying to correct (or rather educate) Harge for the fiftieth time. There was no use because he was never going to learn and was never going to change.

And certainly Harge wasn't about to offer to stay in the hotel with his wife.

"No, I don't need anyone to look in on me."

"Suit yourself."

"What time will you be back?"

"I dunno. Before seven?"

The moment Harge left the room, Carol smiled to herself and walked into the bathroom to pack up her vanity case. She only packed what was necessary, some lipstick, mascara, eyeshadow, and a bottle of her red nailpolish that was starting to run low. She'd have to get another bottle or two when they passed through Paris on their way home. Back in the bedroom, she crouched down to feel underneath the bed for the handle of her leather overnight bag. That would be all she'd need for a few days.

Hunting through the folio on the desk for some hotel stationery, Carol quickly jotted down a note, focusing more on the gold nib of her pen and the way the ink flowed onto the paper more than the actual words she wrote. She reminded herself that she needed to do things like this every once in a while. Besides, she had already spent practically every waking (and sleeping) moment of their trip to Europe in each other's company. There was no guilt in her wanting some time of her own.

 _Don't be worrying about me - heading to the doctor in Florence. See you Thursday. Ciao._

* * *

Sunday, June 18th, 1950  
1:20 p.m.

Carol turned off the Vespa and pulled the key from the ignition, placing it directly into her handbag. She looked around, seeing nothing but olive trees and benches every twenty feet or so lining the unpaved road that ran behind the gardens. She was amazed that only steps away from the throngs of tourists on the other side of the river there were these pockets of tranquility throughout the city. With a flick of her wrist, Carol untied the scarf she'd put on before leaving her hotel, pleased to find her hair still neat and orderly when she knotted it to the handle of her purse.

Toying with the top two buttons of her dress, Carol debated undoing them then shook her head when she remembered she was somewhere secluded. Nothing but glass, benches no one sat on, and remnants of a crumbling medieval wall. It wasn't as though anyone would spot her there, Abby was certainly right about that. She then took the thin blanket from her bag, spreading it out on the grass.

If she learned anything from her time in Europe, it was that she needed to carry a corkscrew on her at all times so whenever the mood struck her for a glass of red, she didn't need to worry about being somewhere like where she was then without a way to open a bottle. Carol took a swig of wine and cracked open her book, flopping down onto the blanket and stretching out her legs. Instead of two buttons, she undid three.

A perfect tranquility.

A perfect summer afternoon.

"With psychosomatic symptoms, difficult to endure.… " she teasingly sang to herself as she took a deep breath and continued reading chapter four of the second volume of _Le deuxième sexe_.


	5. Pick-A-Little, Talk-A-Little

Thursday, April 18th, 1957  
6:06 p.m.

Every time Carol shifted her hips on the couch, the leather made an uncomfortable sounding creak. Her toes began to involuntarily fidget after more than thirty minutes of motionlessly reclining on the sofa; not like their movements were visible inside her shoes. She ran her thumb over the back of her finger where she toyed with the rose gold band Therese had given her a few years earlier, twisting it around her finger to press the smooth metal against her. She stared at the plant in the corner of the room, wondering if it had been watered recently. She thought she saw some dust in the corner as well, then asked herself when the last time was that her doctor (or at least someone in the building) had done a thorough cleaning of the room. In fact, she saw dust underneath every hard-to-reach fixture in her line of sight.

'Why don't you want to go to your reunion?"

The question broke the drift happening in Carol's mind as she shifted her focus back to her analyst to answer her. Carol tightened her arms around herself and took a deep breath before speaking. She remained quiet for as long as possible before speaking. "I have nothing in common with them. Everyone there will be telling the same story about their husbands, children, houses, dishwashers… "

"Dishwasher aside, you don't think you have things in common with them? With Therese? Rindy?"

"Therese is _not_ my husband. I do have a - partner - in common, but you know as well as I simply cannot - openly - discuss it. "

"True, however - "

"No, I can't do that. I don't want to go back to where I need to think about every word that pours from my mouth. Yesterday was… yesterday was our anniversary. Four years now since Therese and I have been living together. Four years since I made a commitment to not be dishonest with myself or those I know about who I am or who Therese is to me. Within reasonable bounds, I mean. Even though I can comfortably say I wasn't terribly close to anyone in my class, I can't say that I am all that eager to spend a couple days with them reminiscing on life _before_ marriage and listen to them talk about what could have been. I spent considerable time with Harge's co-workers' spouses. Their relationships aren't entirely like - ours. They're… bored."

"Are you bored?"

"I have Therese, we have Rindy. We have dear family and friends. Friends who are practically family - they _are_ family. All of us, we talk about everything without restraint. None of us has that lingering imbalance of male-female relationships. We all have lives outside of our home, interests apart from one another, interests we share, lives apart from the children.

"I have a career. I leave the house every day to do something I love. I peruse books to research Carlton House desks or an early twentieth-century chiffonier that someone has over in Cherry Hill. I might not be teaching anymore, but have a sense of independence with what I do on a daily basis. Seeing where I came from, what it was like to be in a relationship with a man for ten years, that's important to me."

"Do you think it would be different now, with Therese, if you stayed home all year and were a 'typical' housewife? I understand you have less than a couple months until you take the summer off."

Carol raised her arm so she could scratch just beneath her ear, arbitrarily flicking the bottom of her earring. "Perhaps, but we share all of our responsibilities because we work. Even last summer, when I took time off after Harge passed, it was still… shared."

"And if you didn't work?"

"I suppose I would take on those tasks to lighten Therese's responsibilities. And Rindy's getting old enough to help me."

"On that note… sounds like you have something to think about for next week." Her doctor didn't mean to sound so dismissive when she was speaking, noting the time. "Five-thirty still alright for you next Thursday, Carol?"

Swerving around to sit upright on the couch, Carol straightened out the her suit jacket, smoothing down the lines that had become crinkled after over forty-five minutes reclined. "Absolutely. We actually have plans to head out of town next week - the three of us - leaving early Friday morning, so how about we make it the week after?"

"Lovely. What are you up to, if I may inquire?"

"We're going to open the house up in Greenwich, fill the pool, and get everything ready for the summer. My nephew and his boyfriend graduate in June, so we'll be hosting a large family party that weekend at the house." Carol steadied her feet before she stood, ensuring she hadn't stepped out of the pumps her wore while her legs had been reclined for so long. "If I might ask, Claire, did you go to your fifteen-year reunion? Or any reunion for that matter?"

"I did. That was mainly because of Evelyn who wanted to see her former department colleagues."

"Are you both going this year?"

Her doctor weakly smiled then cleared her throat. "We're - we ended it. A couple months ago."

"I am very sorry to hear that, Claire," Carol quickly offered.

"It's fine," she dismissively replied with a wave of her hand. She glanced back at Carol and stated, "Not meant… didn't work out, you know?"

Carol didn't go any further with the conversation and suddenly wanted to get out of the room, especially as she had moments earlier so happily announced that she and Therese had been together for four years and were planning a joyous family get together. As she gathered her belongings from the coat rack and placed it on the couch where she opened it, Carol rifled around in the dark cavern of a bag she had the habit of carrying, and pulled out what she needed. "Now, how much do I - "

"Carol," she sighed, "you've been coming here for four years now. You already know the answer to that."

Looking down at the checkbook and fountain pen in her hands, she smiled to herself after being told the same line yet again nearly every week for the past four years, and immediately placed everything back into her bag then closed it.

6:46 p.m.

"I'm home!" Carol shouted as she walked through the front door. Removing her silk scarf and polo coat, she placed the items on the coat rack, waiting for the usual scuffle of feet to the door from either Rindy or Therese.

"Therese is still in the darkroom," came a voice from the dining table. Carol walked into the dining room and found Rindy sprawled out at the table with her books, busy with her homework. All Carol could think was she had an awful lot of books open for a nine year old.

She was glad to see Rindy; Carol was always pleased to come home on Thursdays to find her there, usually doing her homework right before _The Lone Ranger_ was on. Even though they didn't have as much time together on Thursdays, Carol still found at least an hour to spend with their daughter. This first school year of Rindy living with them was proving difficult in that, with her job, Carol missed out on picking up Rindy from school and being home with her in the afternoons, except for Tuesdays when she took the afternoon off. Nonetheless, it never felt like enough time due to all the years that they missed out on together.

Walking up to Rindy, she kissed the top of her head and peered over her to see what she was working on. Immediately, she recognized the French homework she was finishing and scanned the answers she had filled in. Moments later, she picked up a pencil Rindy hadn't been using and silently pointed to an error. "Dr. & Mrs. Vandertramp… "

Rindy smiled and smacked the heel of her palm against her head. "Thank you," she said as she promptly erased _avons tourné_ and wrote _sommes tournés_ in its place. "That good?"

Without saying anything, Carol again kissed her on the head and made her way into the kitchen. Opening the oven, she spotted a plate with the evening's dinner put aside for her, still hot to the touch. Carol searched for an oven mitt to safely retrieve the plate, eventually finding one in a nearby drawer. After placing some utensils and the warm plate on a tray, she filled a glass with water and added that to what she carried into the dining room. Despite there being more than enough room at the dining table for Carol, when Rindy saw her mother come into the room with the tray, she immediately closed some of her books and stacked them neatly in one area so Carol could sit closer to her. She wanted to tell Rindy not to bother, there was plenty of space around the table, but she liked the way Rindy had made extra room for her to sit next to her and how she smiled when Carol removed her suit jacket and sat down near her. Not wanting to break her daughter's concentration, Carol took a few bites before speaking, waiting for a lull in her writing. "Is that your tutoring homework for Saturday?"

"Yes. All done now. Well… the French is."

"And the arithmetic? Science project research?"

Rindy looked to her left at the stack of books. "Mostly… "

"You can finish the arithmetic tomorrow. Okay, sweet pea?"

"Okay."

"How was school today?"

Rindy put down her pencil and sat up straighter in the chair. "Good. Nothing exciting."

"Nothing?" Carol asked, mockingly admonished that absolutely nothing of interest could have possibly happened in the eleven hours since she'd last seen her. Rindy had grown accustomed to the question most every day. Truthfully, nothing really exciting did happen; especially with only a few more weeks to go in the school year.

"Nothing," she confirmed.

"What about at morning meeting? Did you say anything?"

Whenever Carol asked Rindy about her day, she always asked if anyone said anything during the daily morning meeting. She found it fascinating the way the children met every day and, if any were compelled to speak about whatever was on their mind, they did. Tapping her pencil on the open page of her workbook, she thought for a moment. "I didn't, no. The girl next to me today did. Her brother got drafted," she hesitantly noted. "He probably won't fight anywhere because he's a Quaker and a… "

Rindy sat searching for the correct word to say, thinking how to pronounce it. As Rindy thought, Carol knew what she wanted to say and encouraged her. "A what?"

"Conscious…"

"Conscientious?"

"Conscientious objector," Rindy declared, then turned back to her homework assignment. "Like in that movie we saw with the little boy chasing the goose around."

Glancing over the last two questions on the page, Rindy picked up her pencil to fill them in. She slid her workbook across the table for her mother to check, then happily watched her check all the answers between bites of mashed turnip and parsnip. "One little mistake. Agreement. Do you want me to tell you?"

Taking the workbook back, Rindy again read through the answers, biting the corner of her lip as she read. Carol watched, waiting for her to take the pencil in her hand and flip it around for the eraser. After a moment, she saw Rindy make the correction then flip the book around again for her to check. Carol smiled, nothing Rindy had found the error and fixed it. "Why?"

"Because it's two girls. You'd think I'd know that… " Rindy teased back; Carol winked in acknowledgement.

The door at the other end of the apartment opened and they both heard footsteps trudge down the hallway. Therese wandered into the room, no shoes on, and walked straight up to Carol, kissing her on the cheek. She remained behind her chair, draping her arms over Carol's shoulders and resting her chin on top of Carol's head.

"What are we doing?" Therese softly asked, concerned she was interrupting a serious conversation as she noted the books on the table and Carol's quiet demeanor.

"Hi, Therese," Rindy said she straightened out the papers and books that were open. "I'm finishing my homework."

Angling her head to the side, Therese looked to Carol for an answer. "I'm eating dinner," she replied. After Carol took the last bite and swallowed, added, "and watching Rindy finish her homework."

"I'll watch too." Therese smiled down to Rindy who looked up at her with a worried expression.

"So much pressure," she teased as she answered the last couple of questions in her assignment the last questions in her assignment book.

8:30 p.m.

Therese didn't say a word as she approached Carol who was sitting at the mahogany desk in their bedroom, busy scribbling away in her notebook as she had become so accustom to doing for an hour on Thursday evenings. She walked up behind Carol and put her arms around her, much like she had earlier when she and Rindy were seated at the dining table, startling her and causing Carol to jump in her seat. She hadn't been writing, only staring at the half-filled page and blinking every few seconds.

"You're a million miles away," Therese whispered commented as Carol put her pen down in the middle crease of the notebook so it wouldn't roll away. The composition book remained open; Therese could scarcely make out the black smudges of writing on the left side. On first look, Therese saw how Carol had made it to the final page of her notebook.

Carol never hid the fact that she spent an hour writing in her notebook every Thursday evening after her visit to the analyst. A couple years earlier, while busy searching for the telephone bill that she thought was overdue, Therese had found five notebooks tucked into one of the desk drawers: three of which were completely empty and two of which were filled with Carol's careful script in varying black or blue inks. She wasn't sure if they were diaries, they were filled with a wide array of entries or lists about every topic imaginable. Sometimes, she noted they were almost vocabulary words, like _Reader's Digest_ Word Power; other times, a paragraph about a movie that Therese remembered the two of them having seen together or a song from the radio they might have danced to; some pages were her own rough sketches of furniture with dimensions, dates, and type of material noted.

Most of the pages of the couple of notebooks Therese had seen were filled with Carol's thoughts and private writings; she never delved into those pages. She did tell her, however, that she had found a notebook while looking for that phone bill, and whatever she was doing with the notebooks was her business. All Carol remembered was giving her a hug and a kiss, and telling her it was all part of the real ongoing course of treatment she had taken up since they had moved in together.

Therese said nothing further, lowering her head to rest on top of Carol's, calmly breathing in and out, inhaling her unique perfume, nuzzling the side of her neck. She released her arms and raked her fingers on down to her lower back where she rubbed her fingers in a lazy circle along the lumbar segment of her spine. Carol twisted her around to pull her onto her lap, making Therese shriek with laughter. With her chin resting on her shoulder and their cheeks pressed together as they both stared forward, Carol quietly held her, neither speaking for the longest time as they sat comfortably together.

"Just," Carol suddenly began after a considerable period of silence, "I missed you today. I have a lot on my mind."

That was when Therese noticed the sheets of paper next to Carol's notebook. Neatly typewritten pages containing question after question, all extremely personal in nature. "What's this?"

"My fifteen-year college reunion is coming up. That's a questionnaire for us illustrious alumnae."

"When is it?"

"It's the weekend of Jack's graduation," Carol answered. "I don't know if I could handle two social engagements."

"Do you want to go?"

"Yes and no."

"Yes?"

"Because it would be nice to attend. I didn't go to my five-year one, that was when I was in France; and my ten-year was when everything came to a head with Harge. I hear it's lovely, I mean, I remember the reunion gathering the year I graduated, but… I recall feeling a little sad watching all the alumnae in the parade, wondering if they had ever felt how I felt watching them. If they were somehow trying to recapture that moment before they got… trapped."

"You were married too."

Carol laughed. "True, but I never told anyone. That was the war for you. Besides, I didn't exactly have the most typical of marriages since Harge and I weren't actually - together - until after the war."

"And no?"

"Because… I don't have any connection to those people. I don't want to have to skirt around explaining myself or listen to them drone on about their husbands and children. I'd end up just like all of them, talking about my husband who passed away, discussing Rindy, all the while excluding any mention of you from that discussion when you mean so much to me and deep down, I'd want to blurt out, 'My Therese is simply amazing and the greatest, most talented photographer you'll ever meet, not to mention the most tender, most generous lover. The things she can do with… '"

Therese swatted her arm then angled her head to gently kiss her on the cheek. "Stop," she joked, unable to stop grinning. "Whatever you decide. I know I can't go with you… " Her voice was sad as she began to flip through the pages, furrowing her brow as she scanned the questionnaire. "This sure seems to suppose you have a husband and one child at minimum. Like there's no life outside of that," she scoffed. "Is it a matter of _how_ you're going to answer this or _as whom_ you're going to answer this?"

" _If_ I answer this at all," clarified Carol. Before continuing, she swiped her hand up and down Therese's arm a few times until reaching for the cuff so she could graze her fingertips against bare skin rather than the cashmere of her sweater. "And sweetheart, you can certainly come along. You and Rindy. But truthfully, I would much rather spend the entire weekend with everyone in Greenwich, having a marvelous time. We are hosting after all."

Therese pulled her own arm up so she could reach Carol's hand with her lips to kiss her. With every touch and every caress, Carol became more at ease, still tightening her hold on Therese who was still somehow precariously balanced on Carol's lap. "There's something else."

"Oh?"

"I've been thinking about quitting. My job. Instead of stopping in a month or so for the summer to be home with Rindy, then picking up again in the fall, I'm thinking about _not_ returning to work come September. In fact, not returning to work until she goes to high school."

"How come?"

"I want her to be smart and well-rounded and… _happy_."

"She is all those things, Carol. She has her piano lessons, and her tutoring on Saturday mornings. We take her to museums, the theater, movies, road trips. She has fantastically adjusted to her new school and friends, living here with us… with me. I think she's doing alright given how the past year has been for her."

"I suppose I want to get some of that time back, those years where we were living apart."

"You know you can't - "

"I can be here now though. We don't need the money, I don't - need - to work, I don't need to prove anything to anyone anymore. I have no one who needs to be impressed other than myself." Carol took a deep breath then pressed her lips to the side of Therese's neck. "But it wouldn't be fair to you though when you work so hard."

"Carol," Therese squirmed as she caught her breath from the sensation of Carol kissing and nuzzling her neck, "it's fine with me. I love what I do. I know you love what you do as well, but you love Rindy much, much more."

"It's just… it feels like it would be a betrayal of everything I have tried to accomplish since the divorce."

Therese shook her head and tugged at the arm around her waist. "'Tried'?" You should be saying _have_ accomplished. Think of where you were four years ago, before… before we moved in together, before I gave you that ring," she added, smiling even though Carol couldn't see her expression. Pausing in her speech again, Therese stood up and turned herself around to face Carol, placing herself astride one of her legs rather than her lap. "Look how far you've come."

"There is… one thing I've thought of."

"Hmmm?"

"Maybe… opening my own shop. Be my own boss. I don't want to feel guilty every time I want to do something with Rindy on a weekday. I could hire people, Rindy could come there after school a few days a week, I could take off whenever necessary."

"You know," Therese said as she reached to the back of Carol's blouse and seeking the zipper pull, "I think that sounds like an even better plan than outright quitting… " She began to tug down the zipper, too slow for Carol's liking. "I could come up to the shop around lunchtime, every day or two or three. Maybe you have a private little area for just us two… I think we could mutually find a benefit to that."

"Oh?"

Therese wasn't certain if the sound Carol had made was a question to elaborate on what she had just said or if it was a soft moan because of the way her breath tickled Carol's ear as she spoke. "Do it," Therese urged as she kept pulling the zipper slowly down, trailing her index finger along the silk-covered spine.

"Well, when you put it in those terms… "

* * *

 _April 25, 1957_

 _Dear Mrs. Montero:_

 _You've asked members of the Class of 1942 to anonymously respond to the enclosed questionnaire in order to have an "honest, soul-searching picture of what we have become." I can't say that I have necessarily "become" whatever it is I'm supposed to have become in the fifteen years since graduation as I have simply, and wholeheartedly, embraced the person I have always been and have always known myself to be._

 _I would like to preface your reading through my questionnaire responses with the following: I have always known and always accepted the fact that I prefer the intimate companionship of women. Despite this important facet of myself, I was married, but I needn't bore you with the why, the what, and the where of those details as to how I found myself in that situation. What matters is that after ten years of marriage, one child, and extra-marital liaisons (on my part, with women), my husband and I divorced._

 _During our period of separation, I met someone who changed my life. And I hers. We have been together (and living together) for the past four years. On my ring finger, I wear the engraved rose gold band she gave me a few years ago; she wears the ruby necklace I gave her for Christmas that same year. Notwithstanding the limitations of human biology, as far as I am concerned, she is just as much the mother of the child I had with my husband as I am. Since my ex-husband's death last year, we have both taken on the responsibility of raising her. Therefore, throughout your questionnaire, in which you preface questions with "your husband," please note that I am responding with her in mind as my "husband," regardless of the fact I would never, in a thousand years, debase her by imparting that title upon her._

 _Will you spot me at the reunion? Most likely no. My nephew and his boyfriend (yes, you read that properly) graduate from preparatory school and we have a large family gathering planned at our summer home. A gathering where no one attending need pretend they are someone other than who they truly are. I would much prefer to be surrounded by the family and friends who I dearly love than pretend to be someone I am not._

 _In the off chance I do attend, note that I would quietly blend into the background, dressed in white with my red sash just like the rest of you, and you would be none the wiser. Despite these notations concerning my personal affairs and preferences, I sincerely hope that you will still accept my questionnaire as an enlightening Portrait of Madame X..._


	6. A Hard Day's Night

Saturday, December 19th, 1964  
9:36 a.m.

Rindy strolled into her parents' bedroom, her hair done up in curlers and wearing only a slip and stockings. She flopped onto the unmade bed and stretched out her arms and legs as much as she possibly could. With only two nights under her belt on the skinny, short bed in the guest room where she slept, it clear the bed that was most likely originally designed for one was already taking its toll on poor Rindy who at sixteen was only an inch shorter than her mother and at least seven inches taller than her other mother, and do growing at that. Her feet hung off the bed, even when she tried to angle herself into a corner; even then the uncomfortable position in which she had to sleep made a crick in her neck and her legs sore from trying to keep the entirety of her person on the mattress. In fact, Rindy was fairly certain that her particular room had not been renovated in decades and the most likely last occupant was a small London-dwelling evacuee some twenty years prior who had left stacks of drawings on the desk. So as soon as she spotted the unoccupied bed her mothers shared, Rindy made the most of it and extended her limbs, breathing a sigh of relief.

"Rindy," Carol said as she tapped her daughter's foot, "go get ready. We're heading out in about an hour."

Groaning and curling into one of the pillows, Rindy shook her head. Of all people, she thought that her mother would best understand how she was feeling. "No. Comfortable."

"I know, sweet pea. You're too tall for one of those single beds and there's nothing else in the house."

"Sleepy." Rindy flopped onto her back again and stretched out her arms, making the most of the opportunity to be comfortably horizontal.

"Take it up with the lord and lady of the manor later. Get up, darling, you'll never overcome the travel fatigue if you keep sleeping."

"Carol, it's not that." Therese poked her head out from the bathroom to give her two cents on the matter, shaking her toothbrush in Carol's direction. "She's growing, she's a teenager. Hormones. She needs more sleep."

"Yes, but how much - "

"Carol… remember?"

Without having to say a word to elaborate, Therese stared at Carol; instead, letting her think about it, hoping she could recall how Therese had always been so exhausted when they moved in together years before. After a moment of hemming and hawing, Carol gave in once she remembered the way Therese would collapse after a day at work and uninterruptedly sleep for what seemed like hours on end. Then again, when Carol really stopped to think, she could also equally remember being Rindy's age or a little older, and sleeping for hours on end whenever she didn't have school or someone around to make her wake up by a certain time. When she remembered, Carol smiled and walked over to the opposite side of the bed to pick up the edges of the blanket and get her sleeping mask. "Half an hour more, alright?" She placed her mask over Rindy's head to cover her eyes and wrapped the covers around her, tucking them around her neck and then around her feet so she was completely enveloped in the duvet. Before she finished with Rindy, Carol turned to look back at Therese to wink at her, content to have made both her girls happy.

Rindy mumbled a quick thank you to them both and pulled the blankets up over her eyes to block out the light as her parents got ready. Light was always bothersome to her, not usually the noise that her mothers made as they walked between the bathroom and closet to get a piece of clothing, or to the bed where they would occasionally stop to button or zip a skirt, fasten their stockings, or put on shoes causing the bed to dip slightly from them putting weight on the opposite end of the mattress. The nice dark cocoon Rindy made for herself was calming enough to hopefully put her back to sleep for the extra thirty minutes she so badly craved as Carol and Therese continued to gather their belongings and dress to go out.

"What time are we going over?" whispered Therese, conscientiously trying to speak in a low voice.

Carol looked over at the alarm clock; however couldn't see it with the blankets Rindy had pulled far up over her head and somehow managed to also drape onto the nightstand. Carol walked over and lifted the blanket, noticing they had nearly an hour until they needed to leave. "Around half-past ten. The registrar is booked for eleven, followed by - " Carol stopped speaking mid-sentence as she tried to summarize the itinerary for after the afternoon. She blankly stared at Therese as she thought it through, nervously smiling back at her when she realized she couldn't remember what she had wanted to say. "Sorry, I… drifted off," she dismissed in a frustrated tone.

"That's alright," Therese said. "Why don't you go rest with Rindy for a bit? Maybe you're still tired from the flight?"

"No, no," she softly countered. "I need to finish my makeup and get that suit out for Rindy to wear - "

"She can get herself ready. You, on the other hand… " Therese grabbed Carol's hand to pull her toward the bathroom, most likely the only room in the entire house which had decent lighting. "You're another case altogether." She knew whenever they convened with the rest of the family for any kind of event, Carol could easily work herself into a tizzy, ensuring every detail was exactly as it should be. This was no exception and Therese immediately recognized the way in which Carol could get herself overwhelmed with the minutiae of details.

Entwining her arms around Carol's neck, Therese pulled her even closer to press a series of short, gentle kisses around her neck and chin. Anywhere except for Carol's lips. Carol's hand roamed down to the underside of Therese's thighs and hoisted her onto the flat ledge of the bathroom counter. "Is that so?"

Responding with a muted purr, Therese, angled her head so she could kiss a tender spot on Carol's neck beneath her ear. "Lunch. We're having lunch in town at twelve-thirty." Her voice became slightly louder, echoing in the small cramped confines of the bathroom. Angling her head to the side as she eyed Therese up and down with a playful grin on her face, Carol cleared her throat before impertinently suggesting to Therese that they should just come back to the house and tangle themselves up under the duvet to keep warm.

"Moms!" came a disgruntled, yet muffled voice from the adjacent bedroom. "Trying to sleep!"

* * *

7:41 p.m.

Jack loosened his thin black tie and undid the top button of his shirt, inadvertently knocking his hand against the white rose in his boutonnière, nearly dislodging it from his lapel. Once a bit more comfortable, he slouched to rest his head against the back of the booth and shut his eyes. He contentedly drifted off to the sounds of his aunts chatting about taking a drive in the country, and his boyfriend and cousin going on about movies, music, and the days they'd spend in London before Christmas.

The singular table of the snug where they were crammed together was covered with dirty glasses, plates with bits of pie crust sitting off to the side, and by Carol and Therese, the two ashtrays were brimming over with cigarette ends and the occasional mint wrapper. All of them had been sitting together in the secluded enclave eating and drinking, throwing back pint after pint of stout (Carol and the boys) or ginger beer (Rindy and Therese) all the while catching up with Teddy about his final semester of medical school, pestering Rindy about where she wanted to go to college and what she wanted to study, Therese planning her next installation, and Carol thinking out loud about possibly opening another shop. Boston or London: she couldn't make up her mind. Most likely, the entire village probably regarded them as those five desperate Americans who were despondently waiting for the pub to reopen at five-thirty along with a small crowd of eager locals.

The five of them hadn't sat down together for dinner since Thanksgiving, and even then Teddy too rushed to have to get back to school, Rindy too worried about her SAT exam a couple weeks later, and Jack… he was already off in England in November. Jack, however, didn't really care about any upcoming plans, what they were doing for Christmas and New Year's, and in all honesty, couldn't wait to get back to the house to get out of his suit, and finally be able to hear himself think as he fell asleep next to Teddy. Or so he had hoped. Then again, when he thought about it more, he was also just as happy to be sitting in the pub along with most of his family after spending over a month away from them in order to meet a residency requirement for the marriage licence.

He had never been away from Teddy for such a long period of time. Even during vacations from prep school, they would only be apart for a few weeks at most before Carol would intervene by phoning Elaine to invite him up to the city. And as always, Elaine was more than happy to forego any obligation of dealing with her youngest child whenever her own younger sister offered to keep an eye on him. Little did his mother know, Jack would either stopover to see his aunts for a couple days before heading up to Boston on his own, or sometimes they would invite Teddy down to stay until they had to go back to school, then travel up together. Rarely were they ever apart from one another for too long during those years.

They considered themselves beyond lucky. And they knew it.

They knew what Carol and Therese had been through. They knew how difficult separation could be and never wanted it to be like that for them. And with friends and classmates getting drafted, some fortunate enough to avoid service simply because they were married with families, or just up and moved to Canada, others not so fortunate to end up somewhere in Southeast Asia, Jack knew he wanted no part in it. Even though he could get a quick dismissal simply for saying he was homosexual, he knew better than to let any government official add that note to his record. Not when he remembered back to when he was younger and listened to his father and brothers talk about what happened to those who _did_ have that on their record.

The laws could change. Perhaps one day being married wouldn't be enough to receive a deferment, or being in graduate school for that matter. The maximum age could always increase too, and then he'd have to spend another five or ten more years worrying. Even volunteering in the Peace Corps for a couple years wasn't a sure thing either, and Jack was going because Teddy wanted to. Sure, he could be grandfathered in, but who was to say that that was a guarantee? Going to Canada didn't solve anything either because what if he could never come back?

Teddy didn't have to worry about it. Not only was he still in school, but had dual citizenship ever since his mother remarried when he was younger. And even if Jack and Teddy didn't really want to spend an entire evening sitting in a pub, they were having fun and reveling in the company of their aunts and cousin. They were also still waiting on Abby and Nora who seemed to have had other plans when they mistakenly gave their travel agent the wrong dates, forgetting about the lost time in the overnight flight between New York and London. There was only one way around the whole thing, one way Jack could get out of it completely, and as he looked down at the gold ring on his left hand, shaking his head and snickering, he realized for the second time in his life exactly how much his family loved him.

* * *

"Any thoughts about your next gallery series?" Without waiting for a reply, Carol casually extended her left arm to grab the glass of ginger beer so she could try it. Therese had been nursing for at least half hour and it had grown to be room temperature. "May I?" Therese nodded her head as Carol took a healthy swig of her drink.

"Every time," Therese said with a smile, "every time we come over here, you take a sip of my ginger beer as though you've never had it before. Then another sip. Finally you admit, 'It's alright,' before returning it to me… mostly empty."

"You do realize I love teasing you?"

Therese nudged Carol with her shoulder. "I know."

"What about your installation then?" Carol said, bringing the conversation back round to her original question.

"That I don't know," Therese replied. "I'm kind of hoping for some inspiration here."

"How about a time lapse sort of thing?"

"I'd need more time to do that."

"You certainly took a lot of photos down at the registrar's office today."

Therese laughed. "That was only to put together a convincing photo album."

They were both quiet for a moment, savoring their drinks and overhearing snippets of the conversation Jack, Teddy, and Rindy were having at the other end of the table. Therese smirked as she heard Jack mention one of Rindy's friends from school and saw him rebut a comment someone made with the wave of his hand. A glimmer caught her eye, a dash of gold on his hand from the wedding ring he now wore. When she noticed it, Therese instinctively reached to the line of throat and toyed with the chain of her necklace, smiling.

Distracted by the movement, Carol turned her head and watched Therese's fingers trace up and down the chain, thinking back to an earlier Christmas when she had given her the necklace. It also reminded her of a night ten years earlier, way up in Vermont, when Therese had given her a ring and how subtly and sweetly she had done it. Therese only took it off when she absolutely had to, most often in the summer when they were at the beach or sitting by the pool. Carol only took off her ring when she had to clean it or bathe.

"You know," Carol began as she broke the silence, "if I recall… I do believe I too was the recipient of a wedding ring. Roughly ten years ago today, actually."

"You were."

"Well, off by a day, but it was a Saturday evening."

"It was."

"And I never did finish reading that book."

"You didn't."

"How could I possibly?"

Therese shook her head. "Impossible."

Carol sipped her drink and stumbled returning the glass to its coaster. "Well, there could be something useful among the photos."

"Aside from a homosexual man awkwardly kissing a lesbian twice his age?"

"Talk about something I never thought I'd see in my lifetime," Carol sighed.

"That's pure love and devotion right there," Therese confidently pointed out, grabbing her drink for another sip and jabbing Carol with her right elbow as she raised the glass to her lips, "and a bit Norma Desmond too, I might add. Not that age is of any relevance."

Carol looked to her left and found herself on the receiving end of a sly wink from Therese. Therese never winked at her; that was something Carol always did. Taking note of their secluded quarters, Therese shifted herself closer so their arms were pressed together and, beneath the table, she could put her hand on Carol's thigh. Her fingers trailed across the tweed of her skirt, from the outer edge of her thigh, to the top, then more mischievously moving toward the center where Carol's thighs were pressed together. Therese stopped moving her hand, keeping it still once it was where it wanted to be and after a moment or two of silence, began to mischievously makes circles with a finger. It was difficult to hear low noises in the pub, even within the fairly small confines of the snug where Teddy, Jack, and Rindy were boisterously engaged in a possible conversation about college, but Therese was fairly certain she had heard Carol purr when she started to trace circles against her thigh.

"Those hands of yours… " Carol noted in a low voice after a moment of comfortable silence between the pair of them.

"What?" asked Therese as she tucked a strand of loose hair behind her ear. Carol didn't say anything, instead looked straight ahead as she picked up her pint and finished the rest of her stout. "What?" she asked a second time.

Carol coughed, managing to squeak out one word. "Trouble."

"Oh, really?"

Carol smiled in reply and tugged at Therese's arms, dragging her to sit across her lap so that her back rested against the side of the snug and her legs arched across Carol's lap.

"Stop!" Therese laughed. "Someone might see us!"

"No one can see where my hands are, and certainly no one can see us in here. It's not illegal or anything… least not for women." Carol waved her hand dismissively then curled it around Therese's waist, sliding her hand just under the waistband of her skirt. Her fingers repeated a similar circular pattern that Therese had traced earlier along Carol's own thigh, but instead of a layer of tweed and anything else underneath, Carol only felt the silk from her undergarments beneath her palm and the warm cotton from her blouse against her knuckles.

"Mom? May I have another?"

Raising her glass, Rindy looked at her mother who was too busy enjoying stealing sips of Therese's drink and whispering into her ear, readily making her giggle. "Perhaps hands… rings… hands and rings are the theme for your next installation… "

"Hmm… I like that," Therese whispered. "I love you."

"Besides, no one here cares," Carol loudly slurred as she pressed her lips to the side of Therese's neck.

"I care, moms!" Rindy exclaimed then finished off her drink in a huff.

* * *

"Do you know where you want to apply?" Jack asked his cousin who he could feel tapping her feet on the floor near his own toes.

"I dunno."

"Oh, come on. You must have a wishlist of sorts, Rin."

"Yeah, but they won't take me." Rindy looked away from Teddy, staring into her pint glass at the little bit of drink still in there.

Lifting her head to look at the boys, she smirked as she chuckled and shook her head. Rindy adored Jack and Teddy; the three of them only growing closer as they got older, the two boys went to college, and RIndy went to boarding school herself. She still hadn't forgiven her aunt for disowning Jack after he graduated from prep school; frankly, she wasn't sure if she ever could. Her loss, Rindy rationalized, because Jack was better off with her mothers and Teddy and his family than anything else.

"Why not? You're smart. You've got the grades. You… oh." Jack stopped speaking and turned away.

"It's alright," she dismissively answered with a wave of her hand.

Teddy growled before speaking. "It's not alright, Rin. Ignorant, sexist, elitist assholes… don't get me started," he added, taking the last swig of his stout. "I'm sorry, but you're smarter and… and pick up new material faster than practically all the guys we ever went to school with and… you're far more qualified - "

"You said you wouldn't get started," Jack warmly noted, "and you sound like your mothers."

Rindy rested her head against Teddy's shoulder, grasping his hand to calm him down from the agitation. She smiled upon hearing Teddy's breathing calm when he clutched her hand firmly in his and squeeze back, wordlessly telling her it was alright.

"You wanna do science? Math? French? Engineering?"

Rindy slyly smiled. "Still thinking about it… "

"Berkeley admits girls," Teddy pointed out, "and so does Michigan. Bates? Middlebury? Oxford or Cambridge too, for that matter."

"MIT?" offered Jack. After taking a sip of his drink, he smiled back at Rindy and pushed his half-filled drink over to Teddy who had just finished his own pint. "I'm sensing some hesitation, cuz."

"I just don't want any restrictions. Any co-ed school - every one of them - seems to have one set of rules for men and another for women. Even the women's colleges still have curfews. You never had to deal with any of that bullshit. I'll be eighteen and that's just - "

"Bollocks?"

Touching Teddy's arm as she repeated what he said, Rindy smirked. "Bollocks, yeah."

"You know there's only one real solution to all of this, right?" Rindy shook her head, not entirely following what her cousin was saying. Jack grinned at Teddy, then leaned forward, resting on his elbows on the table as he started speaking. "What you do is apply to MIT or Radcliffe or wherever and put our Boston address on your paperwork. Be a commuter who lives with your family. No restrictions, more leniency, wicked good food, more space - you'd have the entire third floor to yourself - and you'd be living in the city proper instead of Cambridge. You know we don't care what you get up to."

"You know, that idea's not a half bad."

"Learn to really look after and care of yourself while you're still in college," Jack added. "Besides, you've had the whole dorm experience at Miss Porter's. You wouldn't be missing anything."

"Except curfews. Panty raids."

Rindy shut her eyes. "Fuck that."

Teddy roared and jabbed Jack in the arm before gesturing with his hand to his cousin. "See? Cookie cutter image of your aunt, right down to the Chanel suit and foul mouth. And she looks really really nice. You look nice, Rin," he said with a big smile on his face.

Rindy suddenly became self-conscious of her appearance, tugging at the sleeves of her suit jacket. She crossed her arms, sitting a bit further back on the bench. It wasn't exactly her suit; the suit came from her mother, one of the originals she had picked up in Paris during the first visit she and Therese had taken ten years earlier. Her arms were a bit longer than her mother's, and the three-quarter sleeves felt unreasonably short. It was easily the best-looking fancy dress item she had, especially since anything else Rindy could get her hands on was too short at all angles, no matter where she looked for something. She remembered taking it to school with her that fall, unsure if she'd ever have the occasion to wear it to an event or school gathering. It remained in the closet of her dorm room until her roommate Charlotte asked her to try it on.

The wave of self-consciousness passed, especially when Rindy thought back to what happened once Charlotte caught sight of her in the Chanel suit. Needless to say, it didn't stay on that long.

"This one though," Jack said as he pointed to his partner, "this one would gather up as much underwear from the panty raid as possible, put it in a box - "

"- along with cookies I baked - "

"- with a handwritten apology note, then very politely return everything to the girls. The Cliffies seriously loved you for that."

"You try growing up with two mothers," Teddy sighed, observing Rindy silently nod her head in agreement without having to clarify for her benefit, "going on and on and on about the cost of a bra and underthings or whatever, how to properly wash and care for them… Use of hydrogen peroxide and its properties. I have all this… knowledge."

"You'd have made an excellent husband, Teddy Bear," Jack laughed, shaking his head. "You had such a unique upbringing."

"That's why you love me!"

"The lesbians at least were extraordinarily grateful no pervy frat guy had their mitts on 'em."

"They loved me too! And you, Jack. But, you know, we'll hopefully be in Tunisia, and honestly I think everyone would be just fine with you living there. You should probably ask Jack's _wife_ though… and, I think it's his… sister-in-law?" Teddy tried his best to mask his laughter, but couldn't speak without letting out a chuckle or two.

"You can bring guys back. And go on the Pill too if you want. I know women in our family are exceptionally fertile," Jack reasoned with a sour expression.

"Except for your Great Aunt Alice," Teddy quickly noted.

Rindy rubbed her eye and blinked a few times before responding. She loved the boys, but sometimes the three of them had the strangest of conversations. Then again, little surprised her anymore in regards to her family or the topics of discussion they managed to find themselves in whenever they gathered together. "I don't think Aunt Alice ever wanted to test that theory."

Teddy squinted and looked to his right. "Actually, come to think of it, I don't think our house has seen male-female relations in over forty years. It might shock the foundation."

"Or girls. You know we don't discriminate in our house."

"Guys, I don't… "

"Or like Jack said: 'Or girls…'" Teddy suggested as he trailed off, not even needing to finish what he was saying in order for Rindy's face to turn the brightest shade of red. Rindy looked away, back toward her pint glass and took the last sip without making any comment. "Ohhh, I see. You... and that dancer. Charlotte, yeah?"

"Shhh." Rindy again pushed back at Teddy who couldn't stop wagging his eyebrows and grinning. She looked over toward her mothers, trying to see if they had heard anything Teddy had offhandedly acknowledged, but they were too engrossed in conversation with one another to note the three of them sitting at the other end of the table.

"I knew it!"

"C'mon, Teddy," Jack said, "let her alone about Char."

"Oh, God, does everyone know?" Rindy blushed and hid her eyes with her hands, unable to see Jack and Teddy both grinning and nodding their heads. After taking a deep breath, she lowered her hands and tried to brush it off as best she could, swiping her hair from her eyes and acting as nonchalant as possible about the whole thing. "Yeah, well, it's nothing serious. Only - "

"Snogging?" interrupted Teddy.

"Fooling around?" Jack added.

"Yeah?" she bashfully answered, unsure of her reply.

"Well, whatever it is, make sure you keep your door locked."

"Suit. Swearing. Ladies. Apple. Fall. Tree," sputtered Teddy.

"That's really rich coming from the two of you. Just for that..." Rindy blushed, cleared her throat, "Mom? May I have another?"

Raising her glass, Rindy looked at her mother who was too busy enjoying her own drink and whispering into Therese's ear, readily making her giggle. "Besides, no one here cares," Carol loudly slurred as she pressed her lips to the side of Therese's neck.

"I care, moms!" Rindy exclaimed then finished off her drink in a huff. "I swear, they are more handsy than my classmates sometimes," she muttered under her breath.

Carol pried her lips away from Therese's neck. "How many have you had?" she asked.

As Rindy quickly eyed the glasses in front of her, it was clear her mother couldn't see (or count) the four dirty pint glasses on the table in front of her, behind all the dirty plates and the ashtrays. "Two?"

"Try three… " Jack quickly muttered as he finished off his own drink.

"Oh, come on, it's medicinal."

"So is wine," Therese quipped as she arched her legs over Carol's lap.

"Dr. Barrett, back me up here."

"Soon-to-be-doctor," he corrected.

"Just one more," Carol conceded.

Jack leaned in, "You know she said that two pints ago, Rin. Don't worry, she did the same with me when I was your age."

"It's just ginger beer," Rindy brushed off, "and I did eat a pie and a half, besides - "

The door slid all the way to the left, startling everyone, more specifically Therese who was precariously sitting against the wall with her legs draped over Carol's lap. As she jumped in her place, Carol instinctively tightened her arms around Therese's waist to keep her from tumbling over and pulled her closer as to not fall.

"We made it. Barely," Abby moaned. "I smell… terrible."

"I can't believe you missed the wedding of the century! Your only nephew!" Carol gleefully shouted as Abby and Nora piled into the enclosed space.

They both looked exhausted, disheveled, and cranky; eagerly waiting for Rindy to remove her legs from the seat in order to make room for the two of them. Nora first slid in, then got up just as quickly as she sat down to greet both Therese and Carol with a kiss. "It doesn't look like this one needs anymore kisses," Nora said as she pointed to Therese, noting trace amounts of lipstick on her neck as she finally sat down and slid close to Rindy. " _Ciao_ , _tesoro_ ," she said before kissing Rindy on both cheeks and giving her a hug.

Putting her hands on her hips, Abby was still on her feet looking at the five original occupants of the table, all of them moderately soused and chatting amongst themselves. "I'm sorry if I've been traveling to this continent by ocean liner since - 1926, was it? - and am not used to this overnight, lose a day, lose some hours, whatever the hell," Abby exasperatedly explained. "I was traveling like that before all of you were born." She pointed at each person individually and when she got to Carol, she leaned forward to kiss her on the cheek, muttering, "Not you though," and then paused again when she looked at Nora to her right, unsure if her statement held true for her as well.

"I was one of the fortunate few from my corner of this continent traveling in the _opposite_ direction. You knew that," Nora reminded her. Abby slid the door shut to seclude the seven of them into the tiny space together, then raised her fingers to Nora's chin to get her attention, pulling her forward to kiss her on the lips. Nora kissed her back and smiled as she pulled away; the others at the table looked away as they shared a moment. Jack took the opportunity to give Teddy a quick kiss and scoot closer to him along the bench seat.

"Sorry, everyone!" Abby exclaimed as the two of them pulled away from each other. "This one hasn't been kissed since New York."

"Which was sometime yesterday afternoon, mind you." Nora suddenly noticed the empty plates and glasses covering the tabletop. "Say, how many drinks have you had?"

Carol awkwardly moved to pick up Therese's arm to see her watch, angling her neck and tilting Therese's wrist to focus her eyes on the clock hands. "Five after eight."

Abby reached across the table to tap Carol's arm. "How many drinks - not the time - you nitwit."

"Ah." Carol looked at the empty glasses in front of her and picked up a half-filled pint of stout. "Five. Or eight." Carol turned back to check Therese's watch, conveniently forgetting the time that she had mentioned to Abby only moments earlier. " - five minutes."

Nora disapprovingly shook her head. "In that case, Abby… _amore_ , could you please get some dinner? And then bring over five of whatever they've been drinking… and line them up right here." Nora tapped the table indicating exactly where she wanted the drinks placed then took a moment to remove her gloves.

Just before heading to the bar Abby dropped her jacket next to Nora and paused, counting her friends sitting around the table, "Wait, where is the lucky bride?"

Jack finally opened his eyes and sat up straight. "Stayed home to watch _Doctor Who_ ," he replied.

"Kildare," Abby corrected.

"No, not _Dr. Kildare_."

"What? She doesn't know the doctor's name? Don't you people pay attention - "

" _Doctor Who_. TV program, not a real person. Science-fiction," Teddy clarified. "For children."

Abby rolled her eyes then reached for her purse to take out the cigarette case and lighter to accompany her to the bar. "You're all nerds. Some wedding night. Do you need some pointers for when you get home later?" Abby asked as she tapped her cigarette against the case before lighting it. Barely giving enough time for anyone to say yes or no for accepting her advice, Abby went ahead and offered it anyway. Not that Jack actually need the advice. "For starters, see?" She placed the cigarette between her lips and gestured with the first two fingers of her right hand. "You gotta curl your fingers - "

Carol reached across the table and smacked Abby's arm at the same time Nora did. Therese also tried to reach her arm across the table, but was only able to lightly brush against the elbow of her wool sweater, and Teddy and Rindy merely looked away, shaking their heads.

" _Scema_ , I can't take you out of the country, can I?" Nora muttered, then smacked Abby's arm one more time.

* * *

10:35 p.m.

Nora wrapped her scarf around her head, securing it beneath her chin with a loose knot for Abby to untie when they returned to the house. She shook her head as the pub owner held the door open for her and she was the last of their group to file into the street, heading back to the house about half a mile away. "I've never been kicked out of a bar… " she murmured as she ran up toward her friends who were waiting for her. "So embarrassed."

"I have."

"We know!" Carol and Rindy shouted back in unison at Abby, both of them rolling their eyes and sharing a glance.

"And we weren't 'kicked out' in the traditional sense," Jack argued. "Closing time, that's all. Could have done a lock in, I suppose."

"It is ten-fucking-thirty. It's Saturday. There's still ninety minutes more of Saturday," Abby remarked.

"And somehow you still managed to drink the same amount as us," Carol jested.

Carol squinted ahead, looking straight down the road where Therese and Teddy were walking together and joking around. At one point, they stopped in the middle of the walkway when Teddy pointed to his back and Therese hopped on as he then took off, running up and down the path with Therese jovially clinging to him. Carol heard Rindy begin to laugh behind her, watching her mother and cousin horse around yards in front of them.

"Aunt Carol, does it ever bother you?" Jack blurted out.

"What?"

"You know," he bashfully started to say then stopped.

"Hmm?"

"Coming through!" Teddy shouted as he ran past Jack and Carol, carrying Therese on his back and gripping her legs while she laughed and clung around Teddy's neck with her arms. "Beep! Beep!" he shouted as he turned them back around to run down the path.

Jack lifted his hand and pointed directly in front of him. "That. I mean, the fact that they can do that… openly."

"Darling, as fit as he is, I hardly think Teddy there could give you a piggyback and run at that speed while doing an impression of the Road Runner."

Jack smiled and nudged his aunt's shoulder. "No, I mean, they can - even though they aren't a couple - be affectionate in front of everyone or be… silly with one another. And no one bats an eye."

"Oh." Carol looked ahead, trying to steady herself as best she could on the uneven, cobblestoned street in her heels. "I suppose I'm just used to it at this point. One gets used to it in our situation. Over the years, I suppose I don't even second-guess myself when I step outside the front door in regards to how I carry myself."

"I know, but - sometimes - I just want to hold his hand when we go out. When I find something sweet. Or when I'm upset." Jack shuffled his feet as they walked along, scuffing the tips of his oxfords he knew he'd have to polish the next day.

"One finds ways."

It didn't take much for Carol to read how frustrated and fussy Jack was by her lack of a better response. She also knew that there was little else she could do to reassure him, especially since he already knew and understood the status quo. Then again, it was even more frustrating for Jack and Teddy given that, unlike she and Therese, the two boys couldn't go around walking with arms linked or greet each other in public with a peck on the cheek or share a bicycle while one clung to the other. There were certain liberties Carol found she had without recognizing she had them in the first place. Ones that she took for granted every day.

Carol stopped walking and reached an arm out to touch Jack's shoulder. "I'm so sorry, sweetheart."

"For what?"

"I forgot what that felt like. Not to mention I know it's so much harder for you. For men."

"Oh, it's alright, Aunt Carol. I'm just complaining."

"No, it's… " Carol put down her arm and tucked her gloved hands into the pockets of her fur. "When Therese and I first visited Europe - that first big vacation we took together ten years ago - it truly struck me how much I had taken for granted in being with your uncle. That's how I felt after only one year with her. A year! You, on the other hand, you and Ted have been together nearly as long and… and I'm sorry that ten years on for you two, you are truly frustrated by all this, especially now that you're older."

Trying hard to dismiss his aunt's words, Jack shrugged and started walking again. "Sometimes, I forget Teddy grew up with this - turning it off and on - and it's something he has known since he was five. And Rindy. She's had two mothers too. It's second nature to them at this point."

From behind, Rindy tapped her cousin's shoulder to get his attention. "It's okay, Jack, I got this," she assured him, walking closer to her mother and cousin as she brushed her hand against his arm as she got him to stop walking. "Ted!" she shouted, cupping her hands to the sides of her mouth to project her voice.

Spinning around with Therese still clinging to his back, Teddy turned to look back over at his aunt and Jack, making his way back toward them with a big grin on his face. "Yeah?"

"Put mom down, would ya?" Rindy ordered. Therese peered over Teddy's shoulder and dismounted, and moved to stand next to Carol. "You two stubborn knuckleheads?" she said, gesturing to Jack and Teddy as she positioned herself between the two of them. Just as Teddy had pointed out earlier, Rindy always did sound like her mother whenever she was completely exasperated by circumstances thrown at her. "Someday, I really hope I won't have to keep fucking doing this," she sighed then squeezed herself between the two boys, taking Teddy's hand in her left and Jack's in her right. Jack smiled at his cousin and leaned in to give Rindy a kiss on the cheek; Teddy grinned and did the same right before Rindy gave each of them the kiss meant for one another.

11:46 p.m.

As Abby made more Martinis from the saddest excuse for a home bar set she had ever seen, she coughed and pointed over at her friends sitting around a card table playing Monopoly. Specifically, she pointed over at Carol who was counting the stack of fake multi-colored bills in her hand. "You've got Mayfair and all those green-labeled properties… whatever-the-hell they are here."

"You've got all the railway stations, utilities, and have Park Lane," Carol pointed out. She tapped her finger against the edge of the board with the wad of fake bills in her hand. "I could build… "

"No!" shouted Jack and Therese, both of them extending their hands to cover the board.

"Carol the slumlord. You're gonna make your own nephew probably have to pawn that wedding ring of his," Abby joked as she took her seat. She glanced back at Jack, still covering the Monopoly board with his hand as she spied the shiny new ring he was sporting. "That sure is a doozy."

"You like?" Jack said as he held out his hand to show off his gold wedding band.

"I bet it's engraved."

"Of course it is."

He removed the ring and passed it to his aunt who closed her eyes and shook her head as she read it aloud. "' _Mad about the boy_ '? I'm not surprised in the least, but I'll say it again: Nerds," groaned Abby.

"It was like kissing my mother," Jack declared with a frown on his face.

"She did change your diapers," added Carol.

Moaning, Jack slunk even further into the couch as Teddy wrapped his arms around him.

"For Queen and Country?" Teddy offered, giving Jack a kiss on the cheek to reassure him. "And a passport?"

"Far better than getting drafted," Therese bluntly mentioned as the others at the table became quieter than usual.

Breaking the quiet, there was a loud bang or stomp that came from the floor above, stopping everyone in their place as they looked up, almost expecting to see whoever had been making the sound. The chandelier swung a couple times, albeit gently, and stopped moving almost as quickly as it started. Everyone lowered their heads and looked at one another, silently beginning to pack up the board game and books strewn about the drawing room. "We should probably call it a night, yeah?"

"Rindy's already asleep," Therese commented, "and the good radio station is going to off the air in a bit."

"You mean that's one of those offshore pirate stations?" asked Nora as she pointed to the radio sitting on a nearby bookshelf.

"Yup," Teddy replied.

"I've heard of those."

"No wonder the stations here refuse to play that stuff. Look at the names. The Kinks? The Zombies? The Hollies? The Beatles? The Animals?"

"And the 'Duke Ellington Orchestra' or 'Artie Shaw Orchestra' or 'Tommy Dorsey Orchestra' or 'Glenn Miller Orchestra' were groundbreaking names?"

Abby snuffed out her cigarette in the ashtray, admitting to a draw with Carol over the game and a point well-proven by Jack. "You have no appreciation for the classics. Right, Nora? Carol?"

Oblivious to the conversation and only perking up when she heard her name, Carol looked up at Abby who was eagerly awaiting some encouragement, but nothing came.

"Ugh, Abby, you are such a stick-in-the-mud sometimes," Nora sighed.

"Yeah, but you know you love her," Therese said.

Nora lowered her stance so her head was resting on top of Abby's and draped her arms around Abby's neck. "I do," she pleasantly admitted. Abby angled herself to look at her, smiling, and raised her right hand to touch Nora's that were joined somewhere near her throat.

"Eh, nevermind. You kids with your shaggy haircuts and Chelsea boots and those miniskirts… Besides, Jack, the wife's getting antsy. Better get upstairs 'cause she actually might have started without you."

"Abby, I swear to God - " Teddy cringed. "That's my - "

Teddy couldn't finish what he was saying as Jack had pulled him into his lap to dot his face with a series of tiny kisses.

* * *

As they approached the staircase, Carol gestured to Therese to walk up first. Still giddy from the drinks and not thinking anything remiss about the situation, Therese began to climb the stairs, turning her head slightly to the right to look at Carol behind her, noting how her hand lightly gripped the banister. As soon as Therese turned her head back forward into the quiet and darkness of the hallway and took a couple steps, she felt a pinch. With an abrupt shriek and doing her best to not disturb the other house guests, Therese jolted forward toward the top of the stairs to regain her composure. Once she reached the top, she turned around to face Carol, watching her climb the remaining few steps toward her.

"What?" Carol asked, trying to act as innocent as possible.

"You did that on purpose," Therese replied with a tone of amusement in her voice.

"Did what, sweetheart?"

Therese angled her head and put her hands on her hips, not that Carol could also see her amused, yet displeased look, on her face in the darkness. "You pinched me."

"I did nothing of the sort," Carol retorted as she tried to maintain a straight face and dismiss what Therese was saying. "This place was built in the 17th century. It's probably haunted."

"No, it's not!" Therese reached for Carol's arm in the darkness and jabbed it with her own. "Don't say that! You'll give me nightmares."

"Alright, alright," Carol reassured her, still laughing to herself, "no ghosts then." Therese fumbled around the the dark for the door handle as Carol kept stumbling into her. "Sorry, darling."

As soon as Therese found the door handle and turned it, she and Carol entered the room, quietly giggling to themselves. Carol felt around for the push button against the wall to turn on the overhead light, mistakenly confusing the buttons as the power flickered on and off. Once the light was actually on, Therese noticed their bed was not empty and that Rindy was asleep, sprawled on her back, in the middle of the double bed, wearing her mother's sleep mask and softly breathing.

Carol made her way toward the bed, but stopped when she felt the tug of Therese's hand on her sweater. "No, don't. She's exhausted. She did have about five drinks."

"Five?!"

"Just the ginger beer. She'll be fine. We had some warm milk just before she went up."

"An, so that's where you two were. The kitchen?"

"Just let her sleep there for tonight."

"But - "

"It's not like we've never doubled up in a bed for one." Therese grabbed her black robe draped over the back of the desk chair and tossed it over her shoulder.

"Not in years… " Carol noted as she made her way to a suitcase by the bathroom door, quietly rifling through to pull out her pajamas and anything else she might need in the other room. "And certainly never with me keeping my hands to myself," she softly muttered.

"Moms… "


End file.
